Historically, descriptors such as “low-fat,” “fat-free,” “sugar-fee,” “whole wheat,” “paraben free,” and “no MSG” have all been associated with and used to describe products for health and marketing reasons. However, over the last several years there has been a strong push by consumers to obtain more detailed information about the products they are interested in purchasing, and many choose which product to purchase based upon various criteria or classifications beyond the traditional high-level indicators of macronutrients or other ingredients in food. As a result, whether in a grocery store or a niche restaurant, consumers will now commonly see products described as vegan, organic, vegetarian, gluten-free, locally sourced, antibiotic-free, hydroponically grown, free-range, foraged, all-natural, and no preservatives, just to name a few; however, this information is not uniformly provided for all products.
The variety and nature of these descriptors creates various dynamics between consumers and producers. Some consumers may, for health, religious, or philosophical reasons, seek out products fitting certain criteria. At the same time, other consumers may be distrustful of such descriptors and see them as an attempt by a producer to inflate the price of a product, falsely suggest characteristics that their product does not actually have, assign a characteristic to a product by adhering to a misleading third-party standard or grading system, or all of the above. Even where a consumer does not suspect a supplier of intentionally misleading, the chain of parties who each touch a product as it moves from a point of creation to a store shelf is so great that a variety of mistakes, miscommunications, or technical errors could result in products being mislabeled or misidentified as having certain characteristics.
This combination of consumers having a desire to purchase products with certain characteristics and suppliers being incentivized to associate their products with those characteristics, as well as a market where there may not be strict oversight of such associations, leads to friction and distrust between consumer and supplier. This friction may manifest itself as a hesitancy by the consumer to buy products while at a retail store if the messaging and descriptions associated with the product are unclear or lack credibility, and a resistance by the supplier to providing more information to a consumer than is required by law.
What is needed, therefore, is an improved system for providing product, related product, or cross-promotional information to consumers.